Priscillia Anany’s film Children of the Mountain, which she wrote and directed,
was awarded the Best New Narrative Director at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
The film centres around Essunman (Rukiyat Masud) and her child Nuku who is born
with a Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy as well as a cleft lip. Any one of this
ailment would be cause for great concern to the parents but the child is rejected
by the father with formidable backing from his mother, and a rural community
where myths have a strong hold over contemporary life. The film is issues-led and
affecting, a simple enough balance that is often hard to pull off because the
seriousness of the subject matters tends to make for hideous, guilt-inducing
viewing. The writer-director, Priscillia Anany, spoke to us before the opening of
Film Africa, the annual festival of films by African filmmakers held across
different cinemas in London.
You’ve made a film about a child who is born with a cleft-lip, Down Syndrome
and Cerebral Palsy. What was the seed?
Prior to making this film, I had made a short film in Ghana, and I was researching
to find out some of the women issues, and I found that there were not enough
hospitals or accessible healthcare. I also came upon this topic of how children
with disability and deformity were not accepted in many communities and not
accepted in society. This story came to me when a friend of mine wrote a shortstory about her child who has Down’s Syndrome. She said that, she felt it might
have been her fault.
Also, I have my own family’s story. My mom’s sister, that’s my aunt, she died when
she was very young. She was sick, and my mom often told me stories about how
her parents struggled to try to find cure for her. She died, but then basically the
struggle of everything that she had to, the parents had to go through. Combining
all of these, I realized, okay, I want to tell a story that shows how a parent, a
mother especially, would do her best, will struggle to try to find cure for her
child, and to also tell mothers that it’s not their fault if they give birth to children
with disabilities and other health complications.
You also address adoption. Essuman’s most loyal friend, Asantewaa, is said to
be barren.
I just also wanted to throw it out there to also encourage women to somehow
embrace adoption and not see it as such a negative thing.
A nurse tells Essunman that her treatment is costly and that there is an
organisation of Ghanaian doctors based abroad called “GAFRI” who
periodically return home to offer treatment for free, a Ghanaian version of
Doctors Without Borders. I looked online but didn’t find any such
organisation.
Because I made them up.
I’m not daft after-all because I looked and looked.Okay. So The Graft Foundation exist in Ghana. First of all I have a script, right,
and then I wanted to use an organisation like Doctors Without Borders who will
come and help out. But then, when we started looking for a child that had the
conditions that we were looking for, we found The Graft foundation which is a
Ghana-based and funded organization and they take a lot of pride in that. They
also go out to help other West African countries like Togo and Benin. They gave us
those little girls that we worked with in the film. Now, they said that if we’re
going to work with the little kids, then we should use them, and mention their
names in the film.
Essunman is not blemish-free. When we meet her she’s pregnant with for Ejah
whose previous lover and the mother of his first child lives right next door and
with whom Essunman doesn’t get along. Why was it important for us, for me,
the viewer, to see that she may not be altogether undeserving of the hand life
had dealt her?
Well because, you know, later on she felt that maybe she did something wrong,
because society pushed her to feel guilty about having such a child, a child with
issues. Down the road, she begins to question her own self and everything she has
done, and she says okay. That’s how desperate she is to be free of all the issues
and find a solution. So she goes back and begs for forgiveness.
Yes, she begs for forgiveness, but why has she begged for forgiveness? Is it
because she feels it’s wrong, what she has done to this other woman, orbecause her child is ill and handicapped, and now she feels that it may be a
result of her wrongdoing?
I think it’s both, because she started the mother-in-law says, “Your sins have
caught up with you. It’s everything that you have done that has caused this.” It’s
both. She gets to a point where she feels remorseful especially in the scene
before she goes to apologize, when the other woman is walking out, and then
they exchange a glance, and then she just takes a moment, and then she just
feels remorseful.
Rukiyat Masud who plays Essunman is a beautiful but she’s not your archetypal
pretty face.
She’s beautiful in her own right.
Yeah. In every right.
…and dark and her dark skin is so beautiful. When I saw her, my team said, “Well,
we don’t think she’s that beautiful.” But I saw she was so beautiful. I thought she
had a striking look and she when she auditioned her performance was excellent. I
just knew that she was the right person.
Another stand-out performance is given by Grace Omaboe, who plays Ejah’s
mother, is the mother-in-law from hell. She goes as far as asking Essunman to
kill Nuku. How did you come about casting her?She is actually a pioneer actress in Ghana and very well-known. I grew up
watching her, so I had always hoped and dreamed to work with her. That was
quite easy to have her, because I knew she would do amazing.
Jessica, the toddler and central character in the film, is does actually have a
cleft lip.
She actually does Down Syndrome.
Did she have to provide any medical attention for her while she was on set?
No, we didn’t have to. But then as soon as the movie was done, we helped her get
her surgery done. There was an organization that works with The Graft
Foundation. They provide free surgeries for the kids. The parents take care of
their trips to their hospital, and if they have to stay at the hospital, the family
has to take care of it. Then if the child has other conditions and needs a bunch of
other tests before the surgery, the family has to take care of it. But then the cleft
surgery itself is free. Jessica had some issues that needed to be sorted out prior
to the surgery, so we helped handle all of that. Then she was able to get the
surgery.